Object detection systems have increased attention in the recent past owing to numerous applications in the field of auto navigation. It is a common observation that conventional object detection systems and methods require a comparatively greater amount of computing resources. In addition to utilizing relatively higher amount of computing resources, conventional object detection systems tend to have slow detection speeds. Object detection speed is of paramount importance in this technical field. In most scenarios, the driver of a vehicle has to take a decision in a fraction of a second. In such scenarios, it is a long felt need that systems have to detect and notify specific objects almost instantaneously by using fewer computing resources. Images are captured by the sensor and the object to be detected in the region of interest in the said image is determined through numerous methodologies. These systems can easily be plugged into vehicle electronics.
Traffic sign detection is integral to advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS). In the context of ADAS, in certain embodiments, in addition to regulation of traffic, traffic signs also indicate the condition and state of the road. Drivers and pedestrians alike can make use of these alert mechanisms when traveling on the road associated with the traffic signs. Faster detection of entities such as traffic signs, vehicles, animals and the like will allow more time for course correction.
The Histogram of Oriented Gradients (HOG) is a feature descriptor used in image processing for the purpose of object detection. It is a generic technique used in detecting objects, specifically vehicles in the images/video sequence. Conventional systems implement Histogram of Oriented Gradients methodology in software and are characterized by low speed of operation. In some embodiments, conventional object detections systems operate on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FGPA) in order to achieve real time performance in detecting the vehicles. However, this conventional implementation on FGPA renders the system inflexible and is not amenable to integration with vehicle electronics.